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A History of Wizards of the Coast
HerderOfCats writes "Shannon Appelcline has written up an excellent independent history of Wizards of the Coast, the company that brought us Magic: The Gathering, eventually acquired TSR and D&D, transformed the paper RPG game industry with d20 and the Open Game License, and eventually was acquired by game giant Hasbro." From the RPGNet article: "Overall, Hasbro was looking to make Wizards meaner and leaner, and thus a better profit making machine. In 2001 and 2002 Habro also divested themselves of their conventions. Origins went to GAMA and GenCon to Peter Adkison. Around the same time they also outsourced their magazines by licensing Dungeon, Dragon, Polyhedron, and Amazing Stories to Paizo Publishing, who continues to publish the RPG magazines today. Two years later another pruning would come. Wizards had also been running 85 'Game Keeper' and 'Wizards of the Coast' retail stores, but in early 2004, Hasbro shut them all down. Together with selling the conventions, this relieved any concerns that Wizards might be developing a vertical monopoly, like that controlled by Games Workshop in the UK--and really such a monopoly wouldn't have made sense given the d20 strategy. "
Hasbro killed the Game Keeper! Those bastards!
I must say, Wizards did an incredible job improving D&D with the changes they made going from advanced to 3.0 and then eventually 3.5. I began to play advanced d&d only about a year before the 3.0 launch and got to witness the new life that was injected into the industry. A much more streamlined ruleset and (fairly) well playtested books made me into the RPG addict I am today.
Anail Nathrock Uthvass Bethudd Dochiel Dienve
In case anyone in interested in spring of 1997 I visited TSR on a business trip. This was just after the Wizard's of the Coast buyout. For the curious here's my writeup on visiting TSR during the final days in which you can hear my perception of the mood (poor, but improving since the buyout) and learn useless things (Peter Adkison really likes ketchup. And why 50th level Dwarven Paladins, an illegal combination in 2nd ed, was a major test case.).
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WotC is too young to have a 'history of' article. For god's sake, I wasn't -that- old when Magic first game out. It's still a young company, dammit! Get off my lawn!
I bought WotC's _The Primal Order_ back in the day. It was amazingly well-written. One of the few RPG books I ever read cover-to-cover. In the very back there was an appendix that listed out how to convert The Primal Order to other systems. That's what Kevin S. and Palladium were suing over -- just that one or two pages in the back of a book from a tiny little RPG company.
I believe it was also around this time that I read about how Palladium had sent off some cease & desist letters to game magazines, asking them not to publish certain types of content for their games. (I don't even know of any independent RPG magazines these days -- not that I've been paying attention. Back in the day, it was normal for these magazines to publish adventures, characters, and other materials for various RPGs.) I recall one magazine editor wrote an editorial saying that since Palladium seemed to be so heavy-handed, they wouldn't be covering anything about Palladium games from then on.
Reading Kevin's history of Palladium on their website is a bit disturbing. It's clear that this guy is very full of himself. And for what? He re-made D&D with renamed alignments, two types of hit points, and a larger number of classes.
-- dR.fuZZo
Sadly the published RPG is dying an agonizing death. Nobody wants to pay $30-$40 for a hardcover rulebook when they can pay that for a full-function CRPG (computer or console, take your pick). Add to this the unending supply of "optional" supplimental books and the industry just cannot survive the same glut that TSR produced in the 2nd Edition AD&D days. The promise of OpenGaming and d20 can't save an industry that relies on an ever-shrinking market of buyers and an ever-increasing price of entry. Further pressure is being exerted by decreasing literacy among teens, lower interest among young adults, and thus an aging tabletop gaming populace hemmoraging to real-life issues and other problems.
Finally, Wizards has ensured the demise of their original cashcow, Magic: The Gathering, through an unending stream of expansions and rules changes & negations. This is further eroded by the fact that it attempts to be a game and a collectible object: you force consumers to pay repeated costs for the same game, both through randomized packs of cards, and by a continual "revision" of the game. Gamers must continuously pay money to Wizards and retailers in order to remain "tournament legal". Why pay $20-$30 per month to Wizards for a card game, when a kid can pay $15 a month to Blizzard Entertainment and still hang out and be cool with his friends?
Electronic gaming in its various guises isn't just eating its grandfather's lunch, it's putting gramps in the home to die. The sad part about all of this is that companies like Wizards are willingly going.
Pax Electronica.
No penguins were harmed in the making of this post.
From the article: ... and very, very few game companies do. By that reading, a book like The Primal Order can be produced without permission from the original publisher, as long as care is taken in the use of the trademarks.
By most peoples' reading of laws, game companies can protect the actual text of the games via copyright, and they can protect the use of their system names for marketing via trademark. However, they can't actually protect the game systems themselves unless they file patents for them as inventions
Back in 2000, Ryan Dancey, the D&D Brand Manager for Hasbro, and to a lesser extent, Peter Adkinson himself, were involved in a rather large multithread debate on rec.games.frp.dnd (there are a lot more threads), the TSR/WotC website, etc where Dancey pretty much explicitly stated that any creative work players produced in their AD&D games were derivative works of TSR/WotC and thus wholly owned by TSR, automatically invalidating any copyright that the actual creator had on the work and granting full copyright on their material to TSR/WotC even if the majority of the work was generic and made little reference to AD&D.
At the time, I immediately pulled all of the material about the campaign world I created off the net. It basically only used the AD&D rules and involved new character classes, monsters, maps, new worlds, etc. Dancey went so far as to claim even using the rules (which weren't patented and even if they had been patented, would have already expired) made the work of campaigns like mine derivative of AD&D and thus the sole property of TSR/WotC.
Needless to say, I never moved on to 3E and flat out refused to participate in anything like D20/OGL due to Dancey, because I refused to legitimize any of his stance. I have an entire three foot shelf of TSR books but I haven't bought anything in the last 6 years mostly because of what they tried to pull then. I find it rather ironic that when WotC was the small guy startup, they nearly died from the bigger fish suing them over the idea derivative works and less than a decade later, when WotC was the big fish in the sea, the same people took the exact opposite stance that got them off the ground.
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
Even though I knew they were WOTC... Even though I knew Hasbro ate them... And knowing, deep in my soul, that all of them are really Beatrice (or Brenda if you are of the MOAV). But! I have been a DM and player on and off since the ancient days of graph paper, "The Judge's Guild," and your class being "Elf." The game has relentlessly improved and then fallen into decadence over and over, like the gaming Empire that it is. The quixotic and brilliant First Empire, with its luminaries and obvious literary influences. The expansive, coherent, and sometimes boggling multiverse of the longer Second Dynasty, strewn with unusual cosmoses (or is that cosmi?). The violent takeover and rise of the foreign Third Age brought welcome changes, with the sacrifice of some continuity came near-infinite flexibility... and the shadow of the entity known only as Munchkin. Ah, history. And imaginary history! "Dang those Suels and their Rain of Colorless Fire..." It's still a shame that the Witch of Shadowdale got killed by that dragon..." and "GUARDS, don't let those gnomes land here or we'll have another mutant hamster infestation, like that last time that we're STILL REBUILDING FROM." I know that there are dozens of you grinning and adding your own. I have my grievances with 3.5 (those RANDOM packs of miniatures still have me muttering curses -- a DM wants to buy 24 kobolds without involving the Net -- making them collectible SUCKED)... but on the whole, great things have happened in this Third and a Half Age. Oblivion is a letdown compared to the interpersonal chemistry you get in a Really Good D&D Game. You crack open books and plan insane strategies between games. The beauty of a game where anything can happen -- but still rules apply! I guess this is really a toast to all the folks, geniuses, writers, dreamers, players, dungeon masters, wargamers, actors, comedians, sages, and fools that make gaming a thing that will never die! A TOAST!! Criceratops ...reminiscing about that one time with the barrel of holy water...
crappy triceratops
I'll wait until AD&D '95 comes out.
The one problem with Hasbro shutting down all the game stores is that in alot of places, the WotC or Game Keeper store was the only game store in town. And a lot of people looked at these stores closing down and thought, "If they can't keep a branded store open, why would anyone open an indy store?" So these places lose a venue to get gamers together and encourage gaming as an activity and a hobby. Yeah, I know, you can buy anything you need to game off the internet. But it's getting harder and harder to find people for TT gaming if you want to get a game going in your living room. If anything is contributing to the decline of the gaming industry, it's that fact. Because for all our high tech nature and the potential geekiness of the people who game, gaming still thrives on face to face interaction. Another thing lost, with many of these little game shops closing down, is the last refuge for the geeks and misfits that we are in some very geek/misfit unfriendly parts of the country. Even the most anti-social amongst us still liked to go to the game store, if only too look over the latest game offerings and get an idea of what's coming down the pike (yeah, they would still go home and order it off the internet where it was probably cheaper). And for all of you who will chime in and say, "My local game store is doing fine," I'm happy for you. But I'll tell you, it was nigh impossible to find a gaming store in LA (lots of card stores, and the Games Workshop store, sure, but not a plain old gaming store). And now that I've moved back to Ilinois, the local gaming stores that used to be here have both closed. So I am reduced to searching the net for my games. Yeah, I can get in the car and drive, but it lacks both the convenience and the comraderie of a local game store, where you know the guy who runs it and you know a lot of the people who go there. I'll miss the local game store; it was often a fun place to be.
This article left out the best parts of WotC history: the corporate retreats full of bongs and banging.
w izards/index.html
See this article for more details:
http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/03/23/
IMHO WOTC have done an excellent job of making money. Unfortunately D&D 3.0 was the biggest waste of time from the perspective of someone who started with D&D Basic (wax crayon and all). d20 system... don't get me started.
Of course both of these systems were very well marketed and it did bring new players to the table with the intention of playing something other than a card game. They also dusted off the old box set rules which I have always really enjoyed - no crayon, but I guess you can't have everything. A decent rewrite of D&D or a 5th generation of the rules really isn't necessary from a players perspective. They got it right with AD&D. It is, however, going to happen because it makes good business sense.
I remember my friends went crazy buying and trading these cards, and usually those
with the deep pockets win the games.
Amnesia is my only good sorcery card, without it I couldn't do much damage to anyone else.
On the day that Cheapass Games, Steve Jackson Games, and Wizards of the Coast all simultaneously go out of business, please be sure to submit that story. But after ten, fifteen years of predicting the death of the non-electronic games industry, we're still waiting for the sky to hit ground. Yes, it's not a fad anymore, but neither is it necessarily unprofitable. People still play board games and card games, they still play D&D and GURPS, and judging by the massive crowd at the last prerelease tournament I went to, they still play Magic: the Gathering (in fact, the last core set has been getting rave reviews). Despite our new electronic religion, people who get together "IRL" still like to put down the joystick for a while and go do something outside of it. Long live the mass niche market.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
and supply us with good replicas of the original Robo Rally?
[i have an opinion and i am not afraid to use it]
Before the buyout of WotC by Hasbro, Origins was a thriving game convention. Tons of vendors in the exhibit hall. A huge game auction that lasted almost as long as the convention itself. WotC took over Origins and killed the auction, much to the disappointment of many attendees. (Oh, there's still an auction but it's nowhere near as big or interesting now.) But at least there was a strong presence from Hasbro with its re-vamped Avalon Hill line and other products, and WotC had an unnecessarily large booth in the middle of the exhibit hall. This year, with Origins in other hands, the auction is still pretty much dead. The exhibit hall seemed far less occupied, both by vendors and attendees. The miniatures hall had MANY empty tables compared to past years. In all, it felt like Origins had been dealt a serious blow. I'm hoping GAMA will bring it back to life. My http://www.gamerhotsheet.com/ web site has (as of today) applied to join GAMA as a communicating member in an effort to help it and its members reach the customers. But I have no problem telling you I'm concerned. I don't want to see Origins become another piece of gaming history, or see it roll into GenCon (which is a fine convention and I'm NOT knocking it). That would be very unfortunate for the hobby.
It amazes me that the article didn't mention any of the internal struggles that had resounding repercussions felt by every Magic player over the years.
In particular:
* Vague references to an interpersonal conflict that resulted in the masterfece that was Homelands being released in place of Coldsnap, which didn't get developed and released until 10 years later.
* The decision to quit paying artist royalties, which resulted in the loss of many of Magic's best artists, and the abysmal state the card art was in for years as a result. It wasn't art so much as it was merely illustration, and due to restrictive style guidelines, it was often hard to differentiate between one artist and the next.
* The fiasco R&D caused with the incredibly over-powered cards in the Urza block, which (until the Mirrodin block) had more cards hit the banned and restricted list than any other block. Rumor has it that developers actually lost their jobs over it.
The once great and ground-breaking D&D has stagnated for years and has become little more than a cash cow. WotC reengineered it with twinks, rules lawyers, and uncreative players in mind, and the only reason it stays alive in the face of the MMORPG onslaught is because it's as full of obsolete RPG throwbacks as the electronic games are. There's really nothing new in 3 and 3.5 except inflated numbers and better art. THAC0 by any other name is still THAC0, even if the math is a little different. I prefer more modern RPG systems such as GURPS and World of Darkness, but MMORPGs have gutted the market, and D20 eats up what's left, so there really isn't anyone left who plays those systems.